Feb. Trailer Orders Leap 67.6%; Total Is Largest Since Late 2012
This story appears in the March 31 print edition of Transport Topics.
February trailer orders leaped 67.6% from a year ago as fleets moved forward with equipment purchasing plans amid tightening capacity and higher freight demand, ACT Research reported.
U.S. trailer makers received 29,947 net orders last month, the largest total since December 2012. It also was the best February figure since 2006.
“We’ve heard continually that there’s been a lot of ‘quote activity,’ and we were just waiting for people to move from intention to commitment. That’s definitely what happened in February,” ACT analyst Frank Maly told Transport Topics.
Constrained capacity and increased confidence in the economy have driven the growth in trailer orders, and improved freight rates have helped make those purchases possible, he said.
Maly said the growth in trailer demand in February was driven primarily by the dry van market, but the strength came from a broad base of customers.
“The word we’re getting is that there was definitely some large-fleet activity that hit the books in February,” he said. “We also heard indications of small- and medium-size customers coming to market, as well as dealers starting to place some commitments.”
February’s tally was also up 16.6% from the 25,691 orders placed in January.
Last month’s order intake was the highest in a string of five months above the 24,000 mark.
From October through February, the time of year when order activity tends to be strongest, trailer orders were up about 19% from the same timeframe a year earlier, Maly said.
“It’s certainly set a good base for the year,” he said.
Manufacturers entered March with an order backlog representing about six months of production, and the current order season “still has some legs,” Maly said.
In its full-year forecast, ACT projects trailer shipments of about 250,000 in 2014, an increase of about 5% from 2013.
Trailer production “surged” in February after bad weather slowed January manufacturing, Maly said.
